


the stars shine in their watches and rejoice

by Teaotter



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 05:09:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/pseuds/Teaotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of discontinuous events in the life of an atemporal being.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the stars shine in their watches and rejoice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [20thcenturyvole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/20thcenturyvole/gifts).



**to buy the bread**

Inside, the _grocery store_ is filled with light. Erika has spread her wings across the _frozen food cases_ where the peas sleep through the winter in their coats of ice. The potatoes shiver in place, their cubed sides yearning to return to the soil. Erika sings to them of the freshness of spring winds of years gone by, and they still. The old woman is not here for them today.

The old woman approaches the grooved metal shelves that whisper of deep darkness and the pressure of stone above them for centuries until the fires came. The flattened earth stands tall and open to the winds in this now, but they remember, and Erika remembers with them. So many years hidden, so many years longing for the stars. She blinks a dozen eyes at them, the eyelids flickering softly, chiming tones of comfort and acceptance. Love is for them, and for what they hold.

Upon the shelves are joy. Sun shines down on fields of grass, their green shoots reaching toward the sky. Rain falls, and the roots of the grass drink deeply, beautifully, of the gift. The soil squirms with life, turning and returning rain and leaves and rock into air and sustenance for the grass. All sings with the sun and the stars, the symphony expressed and compressed into uncounted tiny seeds wrapped carefully against the darkness.

Erika reaches for the center of that joy, the brightest of the brightnesses before her. She stops short of touching it, for it is not here for her.

The old woman takes the loaf of bread from the shelf. She will take the joy into herself and be nourished. Erika sees this. All the erika see this. It is good, and the goodness breathes out of their mouths in light that touches every corner of the room in minutes past and present and future.

*****

**to ride the bicycle**

Erika stands on the corner, reaching out as gently as she can. She lets the old woman pass through the farthest edges of her farthest wings, the contact only a shout that does not travel any further than the moment.

It is a moment that the old woman enjoys, separate from the idea of travel or arrival. Her joy flashes from the wheels of the _bike_ in sharp, staccato rhythms unlike the smooth song of the rolling wheels. The wind carries her laughter, harsh and beautiful, mixing with the deep bass of the gravel embedded in the sidewalk beneath her.

Erika closes her eyes, opening them again on the next corner the old woman approaches. She unfurls her wings once more, reaching again for that moment.

*****

**to listen**

When the body of the earth moves between the old woman and the sun, the blazing song is dimmed and shuttered against the silence of the night sky. A voice speaks from a tiny metal box, from the tower across town, from the windows of passing cars. A voice speaks, carried by the wind, and the old woman settles into her chair. Erika drapes the afghan around her in preparation for the night's chill.

_Hello, Listeners._

On this night, it is Erika's turn to close her eyes in the house and open them again in the darkness of the _car lot_ where the steel frames hold the heat from the sun longest. Where she can hold the thread of the day's song the longest, the memory of its brilliant voice almost drowning out the silence of the empty sky.

In any other town, she would hear the voices of her cousins shouting jubilation, clear and strong without the overwhelming joy of the sun. In any other town, the time of silence would be so very far away, she could never hear it.

In any other town, there would be more to hold apart the light and the darkness, more than a single human voice carried by the wind and the memory of sunlight.

The separation has not failed. But in this place, in this moment, it is failing. As the stars have failed, voice after voice snuffed by the encroaching wrongness.

Still the bodies of the cars around Erika hold the voice of the sun, and she raises hers to strengthen that memory, and bridge the time until the planet's shadow passes from them again to drown out the silence.

*****

**to blot out the light of the sun**

The voice of the sun is. Wrong.

It is wrong, filled with the memories of shadows under the mountain and the night sky without song. It is a jumble of languages Erika has never heard, overwhelming in its intensity. It drowns even the sound of her own eyes chiming, the sound of her own voice calling.

It is coming for the old woman.

The erika cast themselves into the sky, their wings shuddering under the vast cacophony of sound. The separation fails as light without love, sound without meaning. The voice surrounds them, it fills them, the noise stifling even the memory of joy.

Erika stretches out her wings --

*****

**to begin**

There is darkness where there should be light. This is what the old woman tells them, her voice unwavering and sweet. The rest of her words are harder to understand, rooted as they are in this place and time and the fascinatingly different objects that surround her.

There is darkness where there should be light, and the old woman cannot heal the dark places herself. She is asking for help.

The erika sing softly, wings fluttering mutedly as they puzzle out the memories in the old woman's house. Light comes from above, in the place where the inside and the outside are held apart. Light came from above, but does not now.

Erika takes the delicate memory the old woman holds in her hand, its tiny heart singing of heat and the thinness of time. Erika places it into the moment where light stopped, and light streams forth again.

She gives the old woman the memory of stillness, the _burnt-out light bulb_ from the _front porch_.

“Thank you, Erika,” the old woman murmurs. Her smile is radiant with joy that sings like stars.


End file.
